We Have Lost our Toughness

We Have Lost Our Toughness

11/28/16

Being tough is a truth that many of us would like to believe that we harbor without uncertainty, but when the water meets the paddle do we have the stamina to remain even functional?  The world proclaims that being tough requires one person standing up and leading a charge towards a fallible goal while God says that toughness comes from His ability to bring humanity out of the world to advance His Kingdom.  A person that is tough will choose to stand out from the world and proclaim their Creator as the one who can deliver us from the problems of the world.  This reality and truth concerning life have not been fully recognized ever since Adam and Eve chose to allow Sin into our existence and until we return to the complete authority of God this desired state of toughness shall not be witnessed again.

When we ascertain our physical status amongst our peers the main area that we contribute this characteristic is to present a physique to the human eye that outwardly stands above others.  There is no way possible that I could stand up to a body builder and challenge her / him to a wrestling match, for it would not be any contest.  But this inevitable defeat of mine would result in my “physique” to become a broken relic that probably would take years to fit back together and serve no purpose but to present the obvious.  When I was young, the majority of my junior high school and high school years were spent in Texas which meant that since I was a male and living in Texas that I would follow the majority of other males and play football.  Some of you have heard this story of mine but it is relevant because it touches on a striving for a goal that could be costly down the road.

Being white and short gave me two disadvantages when playing this sport of football for almost everyone else on any team I played for was taller, bigger and stronger than I was.  This meant that in order for me to have a chance at playing for one of these teams I had to do things better, harder, faster, and be more aggressive than the others.  In turn, this activity of mine would also cost me not only down the road but on immediate accounts as well for when I gave it my all and hit those bigger players they remembered that the next time the play came to my side.  Physicals were a requirement to play, of course, and each year as I stood in front of the doctor each one would tell me that after I finished growing and began to settle down in age that I would regret this decision of mine to play football.  I laughed them off for I was feeling great and had no problems at all, but as time has advanced so has the truth that they preached to me, for now, I am one tight and painful mess.  Combine this truth along with the fact that I continually made fun of my parents about their soreness and stiffness when I was young and one can plainly see that God has a sense of humor in many areas of our lives.

Was I tough enough to play with the big boys?  Yes, I was and I did accomplish that goal when I was younger and even today I am still seeing the results of that combative attitude I had when I was young.  But the questions I had to answer were if all of my efforts back then were worth it and how much toll did my enthusiasm take?  Looking back at those days I now understand what the doctors were warning me about for I live with the results of my youth every day.  I get to talk about these experiences to some people on occasion but have no real exciting memories to attach so that my time in football would be popular and meaningful.  With one great exception and that exception being of how to work together as a team so that we could be the best representatives of our town every time we stepped on the practice field, the stadium, classroom or in the community and it was through this basis a long time ago that taught me a great principle of toughness when it comes to my eternal life and presence on this earth.  For if we properly take care of the physical the spiritual will follow and supply the additional strength needed to maintain both.

It is through this example of my life that I found out that it is not just the physical aspects of my life that present toughness, for as my body continued to get older my “toughness” status began to slow and fade away, a fact that no matter how hard I tried to slow continued to break down and reveal itself.  In reality, my toughness was being given up rather than me losing it for my body could no longer sustain what the world would call a “fit” person.  This means that the world requires a standard that one should live within and uphold as long as they can but as time tells this status is always given up to the next generation or nation for if this subject cannot viably compete on a routine basis, they become ineffective and useless to society then thrown away as part of history and which needs to be placed in a museum for storage.

In Genesis Chapter 2 we find that God has completed the creation of the earth and all of its beauty and we also know that God has included the creation of humanity which He looked down upon with great pride for we were the prized element of the advancement of His Kingdom.  A question coming from those who are not schooled in the Bible, including many Christians, is why would God create such a race and then allow it to become destroyed through their courses of lives?  This is a wonderful question and it is easily answered but for many hard to accept and to live by after the answer is known.  We have this answer in Genesis 2 when we read that God had everything that mankind needed for their survival planted in the Garden of Eden.  However, God cannot have idleness amongst His existence so He gave the humans a job and that job had two parts to it. 

The first part of the job is given to us in Genesis 2:15 and it states as follows: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it.”  This single verse tells us that God gave Adam a job to do and through that job he would establish his toughness in order to complete the second part of the job that God had for him.  See, if one cannot handle or keep up the physical then there will be no way possible for them to keep up the spiritual for both aspects are created in our lives and one cannot correctly function without the other.  Adam now had a physical job to complete and with the Garden of Eden being full of life it had to be groomed and kept neat for if not the blessings of its life would soon overwhelm the reality of its existence.  Does this type of living standard sound familiar to anyone?  Even back in the Garden of Eden, God’s blessings needed to be distributed according to their presence for adequate life to be displayed.

The second part of Adam’s job was given to him in Genesis 2:16-17 which states as follows: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  We have the authority of a complete God at work here in these three verses of Scripture and what is so fascinating about these verses is that God follows the exact same pattern and order of the job that He gave to Adam as He did when He created Adam with the physical being given first and then the spiritual given.  This passage is another perfect example of how complete God is and how His majesty can never be compromised on any level for He has no rival or equal.

The spiritual aspect of Adam’s job was not only to physically include the tree of good and evil but the spiritual aspect of his job was to understand that his spiritual condition was at stake as well.  Adam was not stupid or created dumb for God would have taught him and Eve what the essentials were to physically and spiritually cultivate their jobs while in the Garden of Eden.  The physical came first which meant that they had to be physically tough in order to complete the daily exercises of grooming the garden, but more importantly they knew that the physical had to give way to the spiritual because it was that part of their job that had a consequence if not followed.  The consequence was a result that they did not understand but knew when God spoke of its concerns and  He made His point clear enough for mankind to know that it would not be a good outcome.

Some question Adam and Eve’s behavior in the Garden of Eden and they try to defend their actions when it comes to the consequences of their actions.  But if we do not understand that our physical lives directly relate to the spiritual conditions of our lives we cannot understand the importance of both working in accordance with God’s ultimate purpose for our presence on earth.  God gave Adam and Eve the perfect setting to accomplish this feat but instead of cultivating their lives in the manner in which they were created they chose to go their own route and listen to the new individual who came into their lives and formed a different yet similar type of relationship with them. God has mentioned this point a couple of times before but we must remember that Satan attacked the spiritual aspect of our lives and not the physical for through his own life he understood exactly what it meant if the spiritual was compromised and what it would lead to in the future.  While there are multiple examples in God’s Word that give descriptions about Satan attacking the physical but it was the spiritual aspect that he went for first and therefore set the tone for future attacks on the physical.

Why did Adam and Eve not see this evil being coming and have the knowledge to thwart his activities?  The answer is obvious for when Satan decides to attack he looks at weak areas of our lives in order to gain access inside.  The answer to this question is that they had lost their toughness, the correct toughness and the order of their failure soon became a reality.  It is logical that Satan noticed this weakness about Adam and Eve at some point while he was observing their activities.  His ongoing and growing relationship with Adam and Eve must have reflected such information as the time with them began to expose, for it had to have become evident to him that their objectivity in their job automatically placed them with a bulls-eye over their spirits.  It is hard for me to believe that they did not know what they were doing when they began to slip up on their responsibilities, where does it say that they did?  We are talking about humans here and every human follows patterns due to their free will, therefore, we can be certain that they did as such.

They had given up their dominion through the lack of keeping up the jobs that God gave them, which means that they had lost their way and had chosen to go their way just as the one who was now heavily influencing them did some time before.  They began to shy away from the toughness that God required them to have for conversational pieces instead.  It was through these conversational pieces that small details began to be missed and doubts about such dominion began to grow.  The atmosphere was more relaxed and Adam “even came home early” a time or two but what they did not realize was that through the lack of completing their jobs they were breaching their dominion for the one who hated them the most and wanted nothing less than their deaths before his eyes.

My dad always told me never to get into a fight with anyone and to try my best to avoid one if one presented itself.  He also told me that if I ever did get into a fight that I had better win or else he would not be happy with me on all sides of the issue.  Up until this very day I have not been in any physical altercations with an opponent and I hope that this streak of non-fighting continues for the rest of my life but I do know that I have been fighting a more serious battle for many years and it has to do with my presence on this earth.  It is a truth that if we do not have physical toughness that we cannot protect what we deem important but in the same light we must remember that if our physical is not tough in the right areas our spiritual will become vulnerable as well and it is this truth that Satan used his manipulative authority to invade Adam and Eve’s spiritual aspects and twist their priorities enough to destroy their way of living for eternity.  Adam and Eve had lost their capability to fight on both levels through their obsession with Satan and the world that he presented.

One can be conditioned enough to outlast any opponent but that stamina is useless unless one understands how to properly defend oneself against the punches thrown at you by your enemy.  Once we allow our self to rule our beliefs we automatically fall down on the physical jobs that we are required to maintain our dominion and then if we continue to fall down on this aspect of our life then the second and more important aspect will fall shortly as well.  God knew exactly what His methods of job giving meant and since He is a complete God He explained the details to Adam very clearly.  God gave Adam the ability to defend his dominion with both aspects of the job God gave him, it was his place to then teach Eve as well and it is evident that he did so through the words she used in the next chapter when it became crunch time.

Our presence on this earth provokes our enemy whether or not you believe it and through this provocation God wants us to understand exactly how to properly defend ourselves through the undefeated methods of existence.  This preparation and toughness have been challenged on a minute by minute basis for as long as creation has been around yet no one and no other created being has even come close to even stepping foot in the ring with God.  But if we do not understand and then apply the correct concepts of our dominion we shall never have the success in life to keep the Gardens of our lives clean and pure.  God has provided us with the perfect plan to restore our dominion and through this restoration once again live in the desired peace that everyone craves and needs.

How do we build up or re-buildup our defenses?  Start working on your personal dominion and allow God’s laws to become the driving force behind your stance.  God’s Word is the one key that holds all the answers that societies around the world need yet we kick God to the curb and continue to lose ground in life and complain and blame others for our failures.  When our physical dominion is in ruins there is absolutely no true way to properly defend our spiritual realm and thus are sitting ducks for our eternal placement away from God.  The old adage that goes one cannot be lined up vertically if they are not first lined up horizontally is a true one because unless your physical dominion and job are following God’s law then there is no way that you are going to be tough enough to fight off the spiritual.

Church, you are a sitting duck for the spiritual darts of our enemy.  In fact, you voluntarily are opening up your shirt and providing him with an unobstructed view of your spiritual heart and when those arrows hit you stand in amazement as he laughs at you as you fall to your knees, not in worship but in defeat.  You do not know how to protect and to complete the physical aspects of your job and therefore cannot fulfill the mission that Christ commanded us to complete.  Your existence is null and void and represents only a relic of a reminder of what you once were and held.  We are no longer tough in both aspects of our job because we have chosen the world over God and are following it down its yellow brick road. 

If we would follow these three verses of Scripture and plant those words into our hearts both aspects of our job shall return to their full capacity and we will once again be restored to the same status as Adam and Eve before they fell.  But if we continue to ignore God and the blessings of work that is needed in our lives we shall eventually be cut off as a nation and as the Church for our defenses shall become as Swiss cheese and we shall have no power or strength to hold on any longer.  God is calling us to repent and to once again complete the jobs that He has commanded us to do.  Turn your eyes away from the world and focus them back on our Creator and if we do so He has promised to heal our land so that we may dress it and keep it and not eat of the forbidden tree.

DLB